Sunday, 23 February 2020

Ghana starts interbank live forex trading

Under the supervision of the Bank of Ghana, financial data
company, Refinitiv Matching, has launched a live interbank Foreign Exchange
(FX) trading for the first time in Ghana.

This market-leading Central Limit Order Book offers a new
level of operation for FX traders with a minimum quoting of US$250,000. This is
to help make the black market, which mostly dominants quoting prices,
ineffective and unattractive.

Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Ernest Addison expressed
the importance of this key milestone to the Ghanaian financial market and the
broader West African community.

“Ensuring that we have systems that promote transparency and
standardization of our onshore trading ties in quite well with our
Sustainability Banking Principles launched last year", Dr. Ernest Addison
said at the launch ceremony in Accra, last week.

"As the Bank of Ghana, we are deepening the foreign
exchange market through the introduction of new solutions to improve liquidity
and unlock the financial sector’s capacity. This is key for the stability of
our market,” he noted.

Nadim Najjar, Managing Director for the Middle East and
Africa at Refinitiv said, “We are excited to be launching Refinitiv Matching
one of the leading anonymous electronic matching services available in the
global FX marketplace, in West Africa. This collaboration between Refinitiv and
the Bank of Ghana and local banks marks a key milestone in automating and
digitizing FX trading workflows.

“Our customers in Ghana will now have access to real-time
executable prices for over 60 currency pairs and 30 FX Swap currency pairs
through Refinitiv’s FXT platform. They will now benefit from an end-to-end
automated workflow, such as accurate price discovery, the certainty of
execution and automated reporting.”

“We have worked really hard to get the Ghanaian Cedi (GHS)
added to Matching,” said Nuno Neto, Performance Director for Trading from
Refinitiv at the launch held in Accra. “We couldn’t have reached this key
milestone without support from the market.”

“The trust and active collaboration of the Bank of Ghana and
the banking community in Ghana have enabled the standardization of the onshore
trading in Ghana while providing cost-effective and transparent interbank
execution leading to a more innovative way of trading,” he added.